Ocean Biodiversity Collapsing

When I was living in Tonga, I could buy 1 kilo tuna steaks for $2.50. Tonga is so far out in the Pacicfic that it has one of the last Tuna fisheries in the world. The Chinese were pushing hard for fishing rights to the area. There really needed to be global fishing agreements on tonnage caught and areas fished 20 years ago. I'm worried that the oceans are past the point of being able to recover.

Oceans Have Fewer Kinds Of Fish
Overfishing Among Causes, Study Says

By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 29, 2005; Page A03

The variety of species in the world's oceans has dropped by as much as 50 percent in the past 50 years, according to a paper published today in the journal Science.

A combination of overfishing, habitat destruction and climate change has narrowed the range of fish across the globe, wrote biologists Boris Worm and Ransom A. Myers of Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia and three other scientists. In some areas, such as off northwest Australia where a wide variety of tuna and billfish used to thrive, diversity has declined precipitously.

"Where you used to put out a fishing line 50 years ago and catch 10 species, now you catch five species for the same amount of effort," Worm said in an interview yesterday. "That's a recipe for ecological collapse and disaster."